Why remote teams are terrible and amazing
One of the best things about working in the future is that you can do it anywhere. Everything you need is condensed into a small, aluminium box called your laptop— put it in a bag and you’re free to roam.
This gives both employers and employees a lot of freedom, but not without some unique challenges. Working remotely can be a blessing… or a curse.
Why remote teams are the best ❤️
Boundless talent
When looking for employees, a company often limits itself to searching in places where it has offices. This means it’s met with a limited talent pool — one that might have great developers but perhaps lacks stellar designers.
Looking on a global scale, however, you could practically hire anyone in the world — as long as they have a computer and a decent internet connection.
24/7 productivity
My own experience working in a remote team was a pleasant one. As a reporter for The Next Web, I was one of a few writers based out of its Amsterdam headquarters. The others were spread out over various time zones, making us able to keep publishing news during European downtime.
The same principle goes for any other company — when you have employees around the world, there’s always someone available. It could be to deploy a quick fix in case of an emergency, or just to keep development running.
Technology makes things easy
Dominic Tarn is a content creator that spends a lot of his time working remotely for clients. He shares his learnings:
Regardless of your role or profession, clear and consistent communication with remote clients and colleagues is the most effective way to keep on the same page and consistently deliver value that drives forward distributed teams.
Modern tools make it easier than ever to communicate with a remote team. For many companies, Slack has fully replaced the physical office. The immensely popular app offers a space for coworkers to hang out, even when they’re on the other side of the planet.
Combine Slack with other tools like Hangouts for video conferencing and Asana for task management, and you’ll feel perfectly in sync with your team.
Why remote teams suck 💔
Time to get real — not everything is great about having your people scattered in various timezones.
Company culture takes a hit
This is a big one. It sucks not having any co-workers around to physically hang out with, and there’s no tool to fix that. The company’s culture will mostly revolve around people’s digital identities.
Some companies try to work around this by planning an annual retreat, but it’s not exactly cheap to fly over your entire team to lay in the sun for a week.
Discipline is king
People working by themselves tend to get distracted faster than when they’re in an office. Remote employees need to be disciplined, hard workers that don’t end up messing around all day.
Tarn explains how a remote employee might tackle this:
Remote work can be lonely sometimes. It requires discipline. Co-working spaces are great ways to connect with others and feel part of a community, while also working with colleagues and clients across the world.
Work is life and life is work
It’s important to draw a clear line between work time and private time, as it just makes for a less stressful life. But a remote team complicates things — co-workers reach out from their timezone, breaking into the hours you’re trying to get your mind off work.
This way, that international round-the-clock productivity could actually be a burden to your work.
In practise
So what does a fully functioning remote team look like?
Buffer is combining remote work with a radical drive for transparency — which is why it built a live overview of where its employees are located. You can see some are enjoying the Barcelona sun, while others prefer working from London.
It also wrote up the joys of working with a distributed team on its blog — it’s worth a read.
It’s never been easier to set up a remote company. But don’t be distracted by the things that can make it great — depending on the situation you’re in, it could actually be pretty terrible.
